Poisoning and What Comes After
by shadoedseptmbr
Summary: "I remain at your side." Three years is a long time to pine.


_Flipping Coins: Deep into the second three year gap. I figured even someone as stubborn as Aedan Hawke would have given up with no encouragement._

_Bioware owns all, I just gratefully play in their sandbox._

**Poisoning (and What Comes After)**

It was true then. Fenris had returned from Ostwick to overhear gossip in Hightown that the Champion had been brought home grievously injured, carried by the Guard Captain and trailed by a mage feverishly casting healing spells. A quick check with Varric, the dwarf showing some signs of stress, had sent him running back to Hightown.

Bodahn answered the door to the Amell estate gravely and allowed him entry.

She's been asleep for nearly the whole day, serah. Perhaps you could take her the soup Orana made?"

He sat the tray down on her desk and turned to observed Hawke. She lay on her stomach and the bandages that wrapped her shoulders and her left arm were clean. Only the lingering pallor and the bruised shadows under her eyes indicated her close brush, how Anders only barely managed to heal her. What Fenris owed him.

Her dark red hair lay stark against the pallor of her skin and it curled a bit around her ear. He didn't realize he had crossed the dim room until he was pushing her bangs off her forehead, checking her temperature as she had done for him, for all of them, after injuries. She was cooler than usual. She tended to run hot, radiating heat, but today it all seemed to be concentrated in healing her injuries. The coverlet had worked itself down to hips and only her breastband preserved her modesty.

The stylized wings peeked out between bandage and band and he laid his hand there, watching her breathe. Here there was the round scar from a crossbow bolt from before she met Anders. Just below the band, the faint white line from the Arishok's stab that had nearly sliced her in twain. She had stood and received Meridith's accolades for ten minutes before blood loss had dropped her. He'd caught her.

The velvet texture of her skin drew his fingers down the line of her spinal column, tense with the effort of holding still against pain. He began to rub away the knots, calling on years of past service. Some good could come of his slavery, he mocked the delusion in an excuse to touch her.

She purred in her sleep and then a softly sighed "Fenris" escaped her lips as she tentatively stretched under his hand.

His breath caught. Still. Nearly three years since that night and it was still his name she spoke in her sleep.

He wouldn't have thought it, heartless flirt that she was. Two weeks after he had begged forgiveness as he left her, the abandoned look on her face nearly throwing him to his knees at her feet, she had smirked and laughed her way through a battle.

Aedan had joked and sassed and flung her deadly blades across Kirkwall and only twice had she given any indication that she was half as shattered as he was by their brief affair. He had tried to be grateful that he hadn't hurt her as he'd feared, but then he'd seen the tattoo wrapping her wrist. They had said nothing about it after they'd tried to pick up their friendship. She consistently kept it covered with bracers and gloves.

Her façade had slipped again when Aveline had been pining after her guardsman, Donnic. Briefly, Aedan had stumbled over her words and denied that Aveline should follow their example. He had to agree, but Fenris admitted that he was glad Aedan's stubborn nature had meant she hadn't allowed their drama to interfere with lessons and the occasional bottle of wine. They were yet friends, at least. It was tepid. It was safe. It was _maddening_.

But she'd never taken a lover. She'd never gone beyond flirtation and stepped past the boundary that would take her into the arms of another. The vine wrapped around her wrist, the ribbon around his still kept them bound. They fought back to back, one an extension of the other. He knew her steps on the battlefield as though they echoed in his muscle memory. Closing his eyes, he could call up the memories of her clever fingers playing his body, as if she'd never stopped touching him.

And in this bed, it was his name she murmured in her sleep.

In his reverie, he didn't notice her tension as his hand smoothed possessively over her rounded hip. He had to admire the quick grace as she sat and turned to him, one hand holding the linen sheet to her breasts, the other aiming a knife at his throat.

Aedan's vision cleared as she recognized Fenris and she lowered the knife and eyed him warily. Weary, she couldn't hide the reproach and hurt in her wide grey eyes as she gazed at him. Beautiful Fenris, perched on her bed, hand on her body as if it was yet his. She could feel the trail his fingers had run, the nerves whispering in recognition.

Even her reliable mouth betrayed her, full lower lip nearly pouting as she spoke. "I never took you for a tease, Fenris." She meant to be sharp and dismissive but her voice was small and sad.

Fenris didn't try to stop his hand as he drew his thumb across that pouted lip and remembered the cider she'd tasted of that one night. "Varric told me," he whispered and she closed her eyes against the flutter his rasping voice caused in the pit of her stomach. "I should have been there."

She was too tired to move her head away from the lingering touch. It had been too long. She managed not to press her lips to his hand and called it a victory. "You weren't in when I stopped by. The job couldn't wait."

"I know." She was Champion, now with all the duties that required her to attend. And he was grateful beyond measure, knowing it was all that had kept her in Kirkwall.

Aedan didn't ask where he had been. He might still wear her favor and she might have woken to his presence in her bed. It still wasn't her right to ask that he stay.

She cast her eyes down to the coverlet, the woven pattern a welcome distraction to keep her from dropping the sheet and opening her arms to him. His choice, his decision.

Her unnatural reticence forced his hand, where boldness might not have. He caught her chin in his hand and fixed her eyes with his. "Never again. I will be there next time." Every time, he vowed silently.

Aedan swallowed, heart caught in her throat, but she didn't look away. "Will you?"

Fenris leaned in and brushed her lips, feather-light. Looking up through his pale hair, he answered. "Until you bid me leave."

She brushed his bangs back with hesitant fingers, then chuckled as her stomach rumbled.

"Orana sent up soup."

"Brilliant. I'm famished." She breathed in deeply, inhaling the aroma and exhaling the tension of the last moments.

He stood, a wan smile on his lips. "Good sign." He sat the tray on her lap. He should go, he thought and glanced to the door.

She flipped him one of Orana's cheese biscuits. "There's wine in the cabinet. Glasses even."

"Such luxury you've become accustomed to." He munched the pastry as he poured a glass. She waved away his offer of one for herself and winced as the motion pulled at her newly-healed skin. "What happened?"

She sipped at the soup. "Raiders up on the Coast. One of them was using some sort of poison I've never come across before." Frowning, she shrugged. "They were just scratches, but they kept bleeding. That's what got me, I think. I got dizzy, fast, and stumbled into an axe." She waved her spoon at where the deeper slice had been on her arm.

"Unusual." He drained the glass and filched another biscuit, smirking at her growl.

She smacked his gauntlet with her spoon and shrugged. "I picked his pocket before I went down and kept the vial for Tomwise to look at. It was effective stuff." She flashed him a crooked grin, the soup restoring her general humor. "Anders is always reminding me I'm not the only one who plays dirty."

Fenris snorted, but his remembrance of Ander's role in keeping Aedan breathing stopped his snappish retort short. Her smile got wider. She'd have to remember to play up Ander's skill. It might keep their adventures a little more civil for a day or two.

The soup had warmed her through and she was feeling groggy again. Nibbling on the last biscuit, Aedan laid back against the pillows. He removed the tray and pulled the warmer coverlet back over her. "You should rest."

"Rather talk to you." She mumbled. "You could tell me about Seheron. Or Antiva. You said you went through there, once."

Her eyes were closing, though. He waited till he thought she was asleep again, before moving to the door.

"Fenris?"

"I…I will read for a bit in your library, if you…"

"Stay as long as you like."

"Until you bid me leave." He repeated silently, waiting until her breathing evened out to shut the door behind him.


End file.
